Mobile telephones have become a common part of work and play, enabling convenient real-time and message-style communications between billions of people. As they developed, mobile telephone systems typically extended fixed or landline telephone systems, with a unifying element being a telephone number that conceptually corresponds to a particular telephone. As mobile telephones have become dominant in the marketplace, the traditional association between particular telephone numbers and particular physical locations has weakened, while the association between particular telephone numbers and particular people has strengthened. Mobile telephones have become lightweight and capable of being carried or in close proximity for much of the time. It can even feel odd to call a telephone number and have the call answered by someone other than a particular person associated with the telephone number.
In addition, the variety of mobile communication devices has exploded. From smart phones to wearables, telephone numbers are being associated with more and more non-traditional devices. In particular, it is becoming more common for a person to possess and operate multiple mobile communication devices, each with features and shortcomings, and each with its own associated telephone number. However, this situation introduces the confusion of multiple telephone numbers associated with a person, and the frustration that the person may not have all of the multiple devices in close proximity all the time.
Conventional attempts to address such frustrations, confusions and complexities are inefficient, ineffective and/or have undesirable side effects or other drawbacks with respect to at least one significant use case. For example, some conventional approaches are poorly integrated with telephone service provider infrastructure.
Embodiments of the invention are directed toward solving these and other problems individually and collectively.
Note that the same numbers are used throughout the disclosure and figures to reference like components and features.